


Ride or Die

by Ilthit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Character, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, F/F, Suicidal Thoughts, Werewolves, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 02:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21292445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Anna had a plan for her life. Not a great plan, but it wasn't this.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Werewolf/Werewolf
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Ride or Die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dire_quail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire_quail/gifts).

The worst part was the blood. It was like puberty all over again, waking up to find evidence of your new failing in your messy, sweaty sheets. Only now it was in Anna's mouth, the iron taste of it sticking to her gums.

She couldn't make her blinds any darker, the curtains any heavier. She'd even tied her leg to the bedpost with pantyhose, the strongest substance known to man when pulled tight. It lay in shreds by the bed now.

And she couldn't bloody _remember_.

She remembered the wolf, twenty-seven nights ago, a big fucking _wolf_ coming at her from the shadows of a tower block, ripping itself out of the shadow like a nightmare. Golden eyes. Jaws like a vice gripping her arm, pulling her screaming into the alley. 

It should have killed her. Nobody would have missed her. Well, maybe her roommate would, for a while. He'd wonder why the apartment was cold and the bills piled up, when he got back from abroad. Her foster parents might pay for flowers at the cremation—no way anyone would put up the money for a plot. Not worth it. God knew Arthur and Mary didn't need the extra expense. Her name would be quietly struck off the university student lists, and no more Anna Pratt, orphan, loner, and literal mess.

She showered shakily, the water running pink down the drain. The thin pale strands of her hair were caked with something. She closed her eyes as she let it all wash away.

She did her coursework over the breakfast while the laundry machine chugged away. Cold wash, to get rid of bloodstains.

-

"You look like death warmed over," said Juliette Park as she sat next to Anna in Basics of Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

"Thanks," Anna said, and buried her nose in the textbook. Sure, she may have unwittingly murdered someone the night before, but her scholarship had its terms.

"I know what it's like. I had a rough night too." Anna glanced at her. She didn't look it. Juliette was as rosy and flawless as ever.

People said they looked alike, little pale things with a touch of softness about them, but Anna felt like a potato next to Juliette. She was always so neat and pretty in her layers of pastels, silky black bob tortured into blonde curls, and there was Anna in her tired hoodie and jeans she'd had since she was sixteen and really into flowery iron-ons.

Juliette leaned in and whispered, "Don't worry, I'm taking digital notes. I'll share."

"Thanks," Anna said again, with a little less sarcastic edge this time.

-

The moon would be full for three nights. Anna glanced at the pale sky as they all filed out into King's Cross, chatter and curses around them, the midday traffic rolling lazily along. One more night to go.

What the fuck was she supposed to do? If she chained herself up, even if it worked, who would cut her loose? Why did Felix have to be out on the sea six months out of the year? Why right now, when she needed him?

She needed _someone_.

A flash of pink and pale green sailed past. Anna sped up after it. "Juliette. Hey, wait up."

-

Anna warmed her hands on the cup of hot chocolate. "Um."

Juliette had fallen silent, and at Anna's hesitation, dropped her eyes into her hands. She was fiddling the chocolate cookie that had come with her tea, and it was melting into her fingers.

They weren’t friends. They shared some classes. Over the past month, she’d just ended up next to Juliette a lot. In class, at the cafeteria. They talked about coursework, or just ate silently side by side, in their own little island of silence in a sea of chatter.

"I, uh. I don't really have any friends... around here, so. I just thought we should--I mean, you're always nice to me, and I--"

Juliette was listening, but her eyes seemed fixed on the corner of the tea-shop's table, like she was afraid to hear the rest of it. Why was she the one who was nervous? Fuck, fuck, fuck her life. Anna took a deep breath. "Your roommate is out of town too, right?"

"She flunked out and went back to the US. Yeah."

"So, so, um. I kinda need a favour. Tonight."

Juliette seemed to deflate like a balloon, the tension flowing out of her elbows, and she looked up at last. She was so damn pretty Anna wanted to kill herself.

-

"You don't think this is weird?"

"A lot of people do weird things," Juliette answered quietly as she clicked the handcuffs into place. She’d just had those lying around. Anna had decided not to ask why. 

"I don't know what will happen to me," Anna said, her voice breaking on that last syllable. She swallowed and tried again. "I don't know what will happen. But you really shouldn't be around for it."

Juliette's apartment was up on the third floor. The house was old, Georgian. The beams Anna was tied to had stood for hundreds of years. This had to work. She could feel the moon, out there beyond wood and steel.

Juliette stepped back. "You have to learn to control it," she said quietly.

"What?"

"Flow with it," said Juliette, and stripped off her pretty pink dress. Her bra was sea-green lace, with little ribbons. "Ride it. Like me. Look."

Juliette threw her head back, raised her hands up to her neck. Not hands. They elongated with the sound of cracking joints. Her mouth fell open, and open wider, her face fractured into teeth and bone and fur.

A howl stuck in Anna's throat. The ancient beams strained.

-

"Morning."

The morning sunlight was coming from the wrong angle. Anna threw an arm over her eyes and turned on her side with a groan. Everything ached, like she'd been running all night. She swallowed. No blood.

"I told you. You can ride it. You can just, I don't know, be? Stop thinking so much. It also helps if you load up on sugar, before and after." Anna blinked her eyes open as Juliette sat on the bed beside her, wrapped in a dressing gown over a pair of pajamas, and handed her a hot chocolate. "Two spoonfuls, just as you like it. I hope the Nestle’s okay."

"Stop thinking?"

"Yeah. So, you're a werewolf. You want to make your whole life about that?" Juliette shook her curls. "You learn to manage it, and then you can just get on with things."

Anna sat up and accepted the mug. She didn't even care she was naked right now. The drink tasted like heaven. "Thanks?"

"Anytime." Juliette tugged the blanket up around her shoulders.

The kitchen area was littered with splinters, but the bruises on Anna's wrists were already fading.

-

"I still want to kill myself." Anna stuck her hands deep into her pockets. The evenings were getting properly cold. She couldn't even see the moon, new and hiding somewhere beyond the city lights and a cloud cover threatening drizzle.

"That's an awful thing to say." Juliette paid the man in the chip van and handed Anna a hot dog. The bun tasted like nothing and the sausage was more dough than meat, but it was liberally pasted with onions and ketchup, and Anna dug her teeth into it gratefully.

"I don't know. I mean, I killed someone. I think. Or I made someone else be, you know, like us. I should just die. It's the right thing." The thought of dying not particularly trouble her, in theory, at least. Maybe she would take it more seriously if she knew for sure, but there had been no reports of wolf attacks in the city. Nothing on the telly. She'd even clicked open a few articles on local news websites to see if there was a side mention. So who knew what really happened? Maybe the blood was hers. (She doubted it.)

"You didn't mean to." Juliette looked down again. 

That was conflict avoidance, wasn’t it? Anna wasn't used to people being afraid of _her_. "But I might do it again."

Juliette let out a puff of air. "I don't like that kind of talk. Please, Anna, just... don't."

"Okay."

Anna ate her hot dog, and after a while they started chatting about that physics professor everybody thought was so hot. It got on from there to asexuality, majors, life plans. "I don't want to go back home," said Juliette suddenly, as they walked along a canal, its waters reflecting little points of light, constantly switching on and off like broken advertising.

"To the apartment?"

"To South Korea." She kicked a can, and it skittered down the asphalt until it hit a patch of grass at the canal's edge. "I've been in England since I got sent to school here at eleven. I don't even know how to be a normal Korean wife now."

"Don't tell me your parents have a husband lined up for you? Like, an arranged marriage?"

"No, not like that. I just need to marry somebody, and, well, make grandchildren. Some nice guy, you know, someone appropriate. And I'm twenty now, so..." She shrugged.

"And how do you think that nice guy would feel about you changing into a monstrous fucking wolf every full moon?"

Juliette blew out a puff of hair and looked out across the waters.

"Why is that a closed subject? It's going to keep happening. It's not going to go away."

"Please, don't."

They walked back to the underground in silence.

-

It was easy to fall back into normal life. 

Anna’s sheets had come out of the wash with brown stains, but getting new sheets was too much work for not enough gain. She made a mental note to throw them out before Felix got back. 

The electricity bill was higher than she’d expected. She could handle it, but she’d have to try and be a bit more frugal. Let Juliette pay for hot dogs with her parents' money. 

The lit-up rectangle of her phone, with its spider-web crack in the upper corner, comforted her on nights when the thoughts started coming back, when she couldn’t stop just-almost-remembering. Juliette was right--it helped not to think too much.

Exams were up. It was, to be honest, Anna's favourite time of the student year. That single-minded focus on grades didn't allow for sagging interest, for waffling between pharmaceutical sciences and sociology. Those decisions had already been made and all she needed now was a good enough grade.

She skipped the usual third-weekend-of-the-month dinner at her foster-parents'. Facebook had warned her that her foster-brother Kev was coming. 

Kev had a way of sticking in your head like a fever. She spent all night wondering if she should have gone, if Ben or Brahim were there and if they’d be okay. Craig was strappy, and Anna could handle Kev, but the kids... What if Craig had skipped too?

It all had a way of coming back to you. She was ten, Kev was eleven, Brahim was nine. She was holding the scissors up to Kev's face. Arthur wouldn't be home for another hour. A whole hour. 

Kev grabbing those scissors from her hand.

She called up Juliette the week before the next full moon. "I have an idea."

"You can just come back to my place again." 

"No, listen. We could get out of the city. Go out where we can't run into trouble. You told me to ride it, right? I need space to practice, don’t I? So maybe, like, out in Wales somewhere, or Scotland if your--if we can afford the ticket..."

"Just come to my place." Juliette cut the call, leaving Anna staring at her number on the screen.

-

Anna stood in her kitchen, her heart pounding as she watched a drop of blood form on her finger. It welled, dripped, and then stopped. When she brushed her skin clean with a bit of kitchen paper, it was smooth, the remaining white line of the wound disappearing as she watched.

Everything was getting sharper, more distinct. She could hear the actual words of the couple arguing in the apartment below. She'd put it down to too much caffeine, that first month. Now...

The pounding rose up, slithered up through her veins to her temples. Her muscles quivered to run. She only had two more days.

Ride it, or end it? Could she even end it? She couldn't afford a silver knife even if she knew where to find one. Pretend it wasn't going to happen, or like it was fine so long as she didn't remember? Anna clutched her throat, curled in on herself, the knife still in her hand, the sharp smell of onions in her nostrils. Oh God. It was going to happen again, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She'd been avoiding Juliette since that last call, but really, she had no choice.

-

They drank hot chocolate as the sun sank on the horizon. Anna put her mug down and smoothed her hair with shaking hands. The mug was shaped like a pink frog, its legs forming the handles, and she stared at it, imagining it in shards on the floor.

"Okay. Here we go. I can feel it."

Juliette nodded and led her to the sofa. They sat facing one another, clasping both hands. "Have you ever been to a yoga class?"

Anna shook her head.

"Okay, then breathe like this. All the way out, all the way in, pause, then all the way out again." Juliette took a deep breath. "Feel your belly rise with the breath, not your chest. Try it."

The last thing Anna felt like was breathing slowly, but she followed instructions as best she could, nails digging into Juliette's palms. She wanted to pant, growl, toss her head.

"Feel it, don't deny it. Let it, um. Let it just… flow."

Anna lowered her chin, her back ramrod straight, and felt that energy coalesce, her skin prickle, her muscles pulse and stretch. She did growl then, low in her throat.

"Accept it," said Juliette, her sweet voice now getting rougher. "See through the wolf's eyes. You're still there. You're still you."

Anna looked up to see Juliette's eyes glow golden, her glossy lips pulled back from sharp teeth. Her bones cracked and reformed. Anna saw, as that wild power cascaded through her, what she wanted, what she feared, and all other things fell away.

She knew those golden eyes.

It was easy, in the end.

-

"Who was he?" Juliette asked, yawning.

Anna shivered in her nakedness, the air cool after her scorching hot shower. She wrapped the towel around her head and rummaged in the closet. Orange-yellow wooden doors, scuff-marks at the bottom. Around the side, the unicorn sticker she’d stuck there when she was ten. "Ugh. Flower-print."

"Flower-print can be nice."

Anna held up a garish 90s dress her foster-mother had kept for years for christenings and weddings.

"Okay, not that one. But you're avoiding the question." Juliette sat crosslegged on the lumpy sofa, dressed in one of Anna's foster-father's shirts and shorts. That outfit had no business looking so good on her. 

Anna glanced at the corpse in the middle of the floor. He had stopped bleeding some time ago, but those stains would take a while to come off the floor. The woven carpet was ruined. How would you even go about getting brain matter off shaggy rugs? 

One of his bright magenta running shoes was half off his foot. One of his feet was half off his leg. 

She picked out a loose sweater, a dull red, off the shoulder. "That's Kev."

"Who's Kev?"

Anna slipped the sweater on. "Kev's a wanker."

"I figured." Juliette looked at Kev with no discernible emotion. "He doesn't look like a flower prints kinda guy."

"He's not." Anna went to the window and looked out. The tower opposite cast its somber shadow over the morning streets. "I can't believe we scaled to fifth floor."

"We can do kinda anything if we want it bad enough. That's how it works."

"I guess I really wanted to rip Kev to pieces." From the moment she smelled him, she'd wanted to do just that. She’d recognized the stink of him from blocks away, mixed with fear.

She wasn’t sorry. She just wished he had been the only one there. 

She could smell so much better now. She could smell the wolf in Juliette, too. The weed four floors up. The couple having sex below them. Something funny she didn’t recognize, two doors down. 

"So, um... You're not... angry with me?"

Anna sighed and walked over, plopping herself on the sofa next to Juliette and resting her head on her shoulder. "I'm tired."

Juliette knitted her fingers with hers. "I know."

"What are we going to do? I can't leave Kev right there. We... We ate some of him." It should make her vomit, the thought of having any of him in her stomach. "And Ben… What about Ben? He saw us."

"Anna," said Juliette gently, in her little voice. "We are going to do whatever we want."

Anna lifted her face and studied the line of Juliette's nose, her chin, the pale perfection of her skin. Her roommate hadn’t really flunked out, had she? 

Was she sorry for anything? For what she’d done to Anna?

Yeah… Maybe for that. 

"Run across America," Anna said quietly.

Juliette giggled. "If you want."

Anna shifted her weight onto her arms, twisting to face the little monster next to her. "Bathe under a waterfall."

"You really have a thing for the outdoors, don't you?"

Anna smiled slightly and shifted forward. Juliette's lips were as soft as she'd expected, breakably, bruisably so, but her tongue had the tangy taste of iron.

"I thought you were ace," Juliette asked when she drew back. Her skin was faintly flushed. Anna’s own blushes where blotchy, embarrassing affairs, but on Juliette even that looked good. Something about its distribution over her cheekbones.

"I am," said Anna and kissed her again. Dogs lick their masters’ mouths, don’t they? 

This time Juliette’s arms stole around her waist, then clasped her hard, as if she had waited for this for years. 

-

Kev's father--his real father, the reason Kev had been in foster care--had a wet grip and a grim mouth. His eyes were red-rimmed, whether with tears or drink, nobody was able to tell anymore.

It was just him, Arthur, Mary, and the two of them at the crematorium. Anna wiped her hand discreetly on her black trousers and took Juliette's arm. She was wearing something almost obscenely lacey and gothic, and it scratched Anna's bare arm.

"Oh," Anna whispered to her as the metal doors opened. The oven to cook Kev's cheap casket in glowed orange like hellfire. It could have been hers. "Oh, we're bad."

Juliette dropped a light kiss on her cheek and squeezed her arm, and they watched silently as the casket slid in, the lacquer flashing into flame before just the doors closed.

-

The graveyard gravel scrunched under their feet. Juliette wobbled slightly on her heels. "So do you get, like, bereavement leave?"

"No, just a note for the funeral." It was a grey, pale day, heavy with rain that Anna knew would never break. Perfect for funerals.

"Back to school tomorrow, huh?"

"You know, I'm not that passionate about pharmaceutics."

"I gathered." Juliette reached down and took off her shoes, walked more steadily on her soft, stockinged soles. "My parents will stop my money if I leave. If I go to Scotland, America, all that stuff. They want me to keep up my grades."

Anna stopped them under a willow-tree, pulled her onto the wet grass under it’s shadow. A few sharp droplets had started to fall after all; the air would swallow them up soon, and return the day to its quiet brooding. "Jools, we can't keep the game up forever. Look what happened with Ben."

They had found him by scent in the all-night McDonald’s around the corner, nursing a banana milkshake. Poor Ben. They’d bought him a Bic Mac meal as an apology. 

He was still in the ward now. It was, Anna told herself, probably the best place for him. He’d had problems before… before she’d eaten their foster brother in front of him. But what was she supposed to do? Confess? They’d just lock her up with him.

"We do need money." Juliette said. “Preferably a steady flow of it, not just what we can steal. It’s going to take some time.”

"Yeah, but..." Anna paused. "So... you've been thinking about it?"

"More than that." She swung her little black handbag around and unzipped it, showing Anna a wad of bills. The queen stared reproachfully up at Anna. “It can get us started.”

"Well," said Anna, her tongue suddenly dry, her heart a red cresting wave she could put no specific emotion to. She would have to leave Felix a note. Pay next month’s bill in advance. Turn off the gas. And then... "We have two weeks."

The smile broke on Juliette's face slow and faint, like the rising moon.


End file.
